We bet that the gelato we make here, on site, every day is the best you’ve ever tasted. That’s because we use the freshest, best ingredients available both locally and globally, and because we keep everything simple. Gelato shouldn’t be complicated; we use fresh milk, cream, sugar, and other natural ingredients.

We also make the best sorbet you have ever tried–with a smooth, perfect texture to die for, made with nothing but fruit, water, fresh local honey, and pure cane sugar!

Gelato and Ice Cream

Gelato is the way Italians (and a growing number of Americans) do ice cream. It’s simple to make, and we make it here most every day. You need milk, sugar, and an emulsifier–that’s what makes it smooth and binds the milk molecules to the ice molecules to the sugar molecules for a creamy, delicious texture. We use a mix of naturally derived ingredients from Italy for our emulsifier, including skim milk powder, dextrose, soy lecithin, and guar gum. You can make gelato at home, though, using just eggs!

Because gelato is made from whole milk, it’s naturally about 3.5% butterfat. You can add a little cream, which we do for some of our flavors, which causes the butterfat content to range upward to as much as 5-6%. The process of making (or “dashing”) gelato adds about 20-30% air, by volume, to the product, which makes it taste a bit lighter and smoother.

Ice cream, by comparison, is aptly named–it contains a lot of cream. When you buy ice cream from the supermarket, you can be sure it contains enough cream to boost the butterfat content to at least 10%. Any less, and it must be legally called something else–low fat ice cream, ice milk, soft serve, frozen dairy dessert, and so on. Economy-priced ice creams are generally the legal minimum: exactly 10% butterfat. You can make that at home using about three parts whole milk (3.5%) for every one part heavy whipping cream (39%).

A typical supermarket ice cream is also more than half air! You can feel it for yourself when you pick up a carton–compared to adding 15-20% air, as we do when making all of our products, ice creams often have 90-120% air added. This gives ice creams their light, fluffy texture (although some brands take it too far, ending up tasting like marshmallows).

More “premium” ice creams differentiate themselves in two ways. They add more cream, for a richer texture and wonderful melt-in-your-mouth feel, and they add less air. At a gourmet ice cream shop, you might find butterfat ranging from 11% to a whopping 17%, and “overrun” (the amount of air added) ranging from 90% down to as low as 40%. The more fat, or the less air, the more premium the ice cream–and the price tag.

Our gelato has about 30-40% overrun and about 13-14% butterfat. Any more cream and we feel it loses its flavor, and begins to taste heavy; we’ve found what we think is the perfect balance of air and cream to give the richest, most fantastic texture without obscuring the flavor. For that’s what butterfat does: it gives the gelato its distinctive (and present in varying quantities depending on the maker) creamy, blanketing feel on your tongue. By the same mechanism, though, it blocks your sense of taste, eliminating flavor and obscuring all the great work put into making it.

So there are three main differences between ice cream in general and a typical gelato: Ice cream has (much) more fat, as much as two to five times as much. This adds a creamy, coating texture, but inhibits flavor, making ice cream excellently suited to mild, sweet flavors like vanilla, caramel, maple, and candy flavors like cookies and cakes. Ice cream has more air, giving it a light, pleasant texture and feel, but again reducing the vividness of the flavor. Finally, gelato is served warmer. We serve all of our flavors at 3 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to a typical ice cream temperature of -5 to -8 degrees.

This small difference has three effects: firstly, it’s softer and won’t give you brain freeze. Secondly, our product has a shorter life span, meaning we need to serve our products within about one to three days after making them (any longer, and the texture begins to deteriorate, which is why gelato made off site and delivered by truck tastes gooey). Gelato is never intended to last more than three days, and ours will never need to. Last, severe cold stifles your taste buds, turning them partially off. This is another reason why gelato is more well suited to intricate, intense flavors like cappuccino and gianduia–-at a warmer temperature, the delicate flavors come together like a gourmet dessert (because it is!).

So to sum up, gelato is made and served with less air, with less fat, and at a higher temperature than typical American ice cream. Our gelato is made in the Italian style, giving it the densest, richest flavor and texture you’re ever likely to experience!

Sorbet

Our third major dessert (after our gelati and ice creams) is our group of sorbets.

A proper sorbet (like ours!) is very simple: fruit, water, and sugar. The chemistry is very delicate, however: every fruit has a different balance of water, sugars, and solids. Fresh strawberries, for example, are 4.9% sugar. Lemons are 2.4%. Mangoes are 14.8%

To get the correct percentage of sugar in your sorbet, you need to add a mixture of sugar and water to bring the freezing point to the correct tempurature, in order to get the consistency smooth and creamy at 3 degrees fahrenheit. This takes practice (or a good recipe, which works until you get a new fruit you’ve never tried before–that’s when a little research and some math come into play).

If you want to get fancy (and sometimes we do) you can then add herbs, such as basil with pineapple, mint with strawberry, cilantro with mango, or whatever you want to concoct!

Our sorbets must be made fresh essentially every day, as they keep their texture for only about 36-48 hours. We make small batches, so the particular sorbets in the case will be changing fairly constantly. We’re sure, though, that there will always be something that you’ll love.

Come by during the afternoons, which is when we usually do our production runs, and you can check out the process for yourself.

Nutritional Information*

Fat (g)

Sugar (g)

Calories

Protein

Gelato
(per 70g scoop)

1.7

16.7

82

2.5

Sorbet
(per 70g scoop)

0

16.7

65

0.2

Ice Cream
(per 70g scoop)

7.3

16.7

138

2.5

*These data reflect median values for most of our recipes. Ingredients such as nuts and chocolate will add fat/protein and Calories to the final product.